Turning Point: Are Hot Dogs the New Hamburgers?

Share

Earlier today, Adam Platt tweeted: “Rule 1 about new age hotdogs: nvr eat one topped w. bulgogi.” We’ll never know what Metromix thinks about bulgogi dogs because they don’t include AsiaDog on their roundup of NYC’s Top Hot Dogs, nor do they bother trying Daniel Boulud’s dog, but we do discover their favorite: The Windsor Weenie at Hot Diggity Dog. Curiously, the housemade dogs at Fatty Crab and Elettaria also aren’t included in the roundup, though they do rank in a Citysearch list of “Haute Dogs.” With all this service now being paid to wieners, we have to ask: Are haute dogs the new glamburgers?

Even Concierge.com, in a preposterous list of “What NOT to Do in New York,” today steers tourists away from dirty-water dogs and tells them to go to PDT like any trendy New Yorker would. Was the Minetta’s Black Label burger a case of the burger trend flying too close to the bun — er, sun? Was it the moment when a once humble and charming thing became just too grotesque, like little Michael Jackson changing his face and chilling with monkeys on a $17 million ranch? Is the tube, not the patty, now going to be endlessly reimagined until its price gradually inflates to $30 and we look for another pedestrian foodstuff to turn into Britney Spears? Maybe. Though if the hot dog is to reach the hype level of the hamburger, it’s got a lot of ketchup to do.